Page 7 of The Key to My Heart

‘Ugh, frozen again this morning. Got up, couldn’t run the tap for the coffee machine and … well. Hairdryer came out again. And all before six a.m., which was obviously fantastic. Old country cottages are nothing but problems …’

‘Oh, gosh, Natalie, you’re joking.I told you.Let me send one of my boys round. Five of them to choose from.Five.’

Five. Knew it. One point to me.

‘I mean it,’ she says, then she looks past me and smiles as one of Goode’s newest regulars lopes inside – Notebook Man as I call him (because, surprising to nobody, he sits silently in the corner bent over a, wait for it,notebook). I like seeing Goode’s regulars turn up at the same time every week. It brings a sense of comfort somehow. Something to depend on, maybe. Like soap operas airing on certain days, like roast dinners served at the same time every Sunday, the table set just so. And perhaps, because it’s a reminder, that it might not just be me, Natalie Fincher, living in a monotonous routine cycle while the world propels on having lots of hoo-ha-hooray fun.

‘I’ll get a plumber, Shauna,’ I say. ‘I keep meaning to I just—’

‘If you’re wanting to sell up, you’re going to want to save as much money as you can—’

‘I still don’t know about selling the house.’ And sometimes I think I do – sometimes I go to bed feeling like I’ve made the decision – that Three Sycamore was more Russ’s dream than mine, and it was only exciting becausewe were going to renovate together. Live there together, grow there together, start a family there together. Most of the time, it feels like living in a shell. A film set or something, years after the final episode aired.

‘Well, regardless,’ says Shauna. ‘Plumbers from the internet will rip you off.’

‘And your boys won’t,’ I smile.

‘My boys areangels.’

Jason appears then, stocky and cocky, and sets down a toasted sandwich in front of Shauna. ‘Of course they are,’ he says, and he shoots me a schoolboy smile.

‘I don’t lie,’ says Shauna.

I sometimes wish Shauna was my mum, and I knowmymum would be gutted if she knew I’d even had that thought. She’d grab her chest in that way she does when she’s upset and wants to convey just how much. (Think: a below-average amateur dramatics group’s portrayal of a heart attack.) And it’s not that my mother isn’t a good mother – of course she is. But she knows too much. She knows me too well. And that means I can’t hide anything from her, how I’m coping, how I’mnot, even if I tuck it deep, deep within. She sees it – eyes like an airport baggage scanner. Whereas Shauna – Shauna doesn’t press, like Mum. Nothing I ever say seems to shock her. If I was to announce I couldn’t be arsed with life anymore and was off to be cryogenically frozen, she’d likely nod, say, ‘I understand, but shall we just sit and have tea and a little chat first? Before we go and pack your holdall for the deep freeze.’

‘So, how was the wedding?’ I ask.

A pigeon lands on the ground beside us, bobs along the tiles, pecks at what looks like a dried-up McDonald’s chip.

‘Oh well …’ Shauna shrugs. ‘It was okay. We left not long after the dessert. Don isn’t keen on these things, wanted to get back for the rugby, you know.’

‘Tell me you at least got to dance, though? To show off your new Swing Teammoves?’ Shauna has recently started swing dancing classes with a woman that works downstairs, in the bookshop, and it’s all she talked about after her first lesson. She glowed with it – with the stories of the bad dancers and tripping over and the man who came purely to pick up women who was thrown out by a woman dressed head to toe in polka dots who announced to the room she was taekwondo trained. And mostly how the teacher called her a natural. ‘Me,’ she’d beamed. ‘Would you believe it?’

‘Don wasn’t so keen,’ says Shauna. She runs a finger under the tight, blush pink leather strap of her watch, her eyes fixed on it. ‘But, ah well, I don’t mind. I can dance when I like, right? I have my classes twice a week—’

‘But why didn’t Don want you to dance?’

Shauna shrugs again, the lilac fleece of her jacket gathering at the shoulders. ‘My husband’s not really a dancer. Not really into all that himself and, well, I’d have felt like a right idiot going it alone so …anyway.’ She clears her throat, clasps her hands together, and although I always want to press when it comes to Don, Shauna’s husband, I know this is Shauna Madden for ‘that’s enough of that, then’. ‘So the dinner,’ she deflects.‘With the girls. Was it just like you dreaded? I bet it wasn’t, these things never are …’

‘Erm …’

‘Oh,no. A nightmare, was it?’

‘No, no, it was okay, but they—’

‘They tried to set you up again.’

I groan into my mug. ‘Lucy did. And he was lovely, actually – really hot, super tall too. Smelled really nice.’

‘Well, that’s something.’

‘I know. But … it might as well have been Mr Bean. A waxwork. A man sculpted out of old cake. I’m just not ready.’

‘To meet someone you mean?’

‘Or to be … to be what everyone thinks I should be by now? Or something. God, I don’t even know …’

Shauna nods gently, the twisted gold hoops piercing her ears swaying. Two women stroll past us, the wheels of their matching, hot-pink suitcases squeaking behind them, as if excited for the imminent train ride.

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